Indigenous Learning Preferences

Open Journal of Philosophy, 2025

Duncan Reid's book is a timely piece on the developing field of Australian Indigenous theology. The key is listening to uncover what is unspoken, inasmuch as it is a path to uncovering implicit meaning. Reid derives this meaning theologically. It can help "save Australia". The approach noted by Reid is helpful in looking beyond analytic approaches to thought. This requires balance: as a reduction to identity politics, but as an ontological belonging, an opening into new knowledge, such as with fire management practice. Reid considers the possible correlation with Eastern Christianity and its reverence for the sense of place, which lends itself to John Chryssavgis's approach to the desert, metanoia, and a fundamental anthropology. The result is an expansion of insight that contributes to ontological and anthropological discourse.

2015

This study presents the outcomes of the first phase of a three phase research initiative which begins by identifying through the voices of Aboriginal students and community members the teaching practices that influence Aboriginal student engagement and learning. The study occurs within the Diocese of Townsville Catholic Education schools in North Queensland, primarily in the Mount Isa area. Through open-ended interviews, Aboriginal students and community members express their views of the characteristics of effective teachers and effective teaching. Considering that the national education discourse in Australia is monopolised by discussion on teaching and teacher quality, we problematize this discourse based upon what members of the local Aboriginal community assert as characteristics of effective teachers and their practice. Further phases of this research initiative, which investigate the effect of adjusted practice based upon community members' assertions, are also presented.

2019

This paper explores the faith of Anderson George – a Wuagalak Aboriginal man who now lives onJawoyn country, Wugularr community (also known as Beswick). Anderson's Christian experience isfoundationally shaped by his convictions of the Holy Spirit in his reading of the Bible. The paper unpacksAnderson’s experience of culture, and the way in which it has informed his spiritual life and navigation ofChristian and Indigenous traditions. While the primary objective of this paper is to allow Anderson George tospeak on his own terms, some supporting literature enables the authors to frame Anderson’s position on navigatingboth cultural traditions, both in terms of presenting the nuances embedded in anthropological notions ofindigenisation along with Anderson’s, and the “One Way” movement’s theological distinctives. As such, theseconversations distinguish the argument in this paper from one purely about culture to one that is directed byAnderson’s active discernment of the spirit/s.The i...

This paper is the story of the paths we have taken to the shared realization that the strategies and epistemological underpinnings of Aboriginal education need to move out of the margins and into the centre of education in Canada, not only for Aboriginal students, but for all students. Between August, 2010 and April of 2012, we were seconded for two years from our Vancouver classrooms to work as Faculty Associates in the teacher preparation program at Simon Fraser University. There we came face to face with the British Columbia Teacher Regulation Branch's mandate that Aboriginal education courses must be taught to pre-service teachers. Part of our purpose was to cultivate strategies using Aboriginal pedagogy to inform pre-service teachers about how to develop practice and ways of communicating with their students. Here we describe how, after returning to our school district, we changed our teaching practices through actualizing Aboriginal pedagogy.

International Review of Mission, 1993

2018

Mixed Blessings , Defining Metis , and Perishing Heathens all move scholarly dialogue past mere indictment of the colonizer’s religion toward the possibilities of Indigenous refusal, acceptance, adaptation, and politically motivated use of Christianity. Read together, these three books function like a primer on the possibilities and pitfalls involved in studying often tense and ambiguous moments of interreligious and cross-cultural encounter. This review offers an overview of each text and then highlights ways in which all three situate themselves in relation to Indigenous perspectives, address the difficulty of accessing Indigenous history through archival sources, and contribute something significant to the field of Indigenous studies.

2023

Great emphasis has been placed on embedding Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in western-based education systems and pedagogical practices. This study discusses the results of a four-month program for pre-service teachers that targeted best-practice Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pedagogy. The program challenged existing notions of westernbased teaching and learning through innovative approaches to the design of learning. Specifically, the program has been underpinned by the 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogical Framework which focuses on interconnected learning experiences which have been developed through Aboriginal systems, protocols, values and processes. The program embedded authentic practices aimed at empowering pre-service teachers. The research design explored four dimensions of empowerment relating to embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives: knowledge, understanding, perceptions and attitudes. Quantitative survey data was gathered pre and post program and paired samples t-tests were conducted and found all four dimensions of empowerment improved significantly following the program (p < 0.05). The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching, learning and assessing through the lens of the 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogical framework to increase teacher agency to become more culturally responsive educators.

in education, 2014

Deepening Knowledge Project, through Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), undertook research within the Initial Teacher Education program to explore the relationships between teacher candidates and Aboriginal content. Our research question was, &quot;Which strategies used within OISE’s Central cohort are most powerful in increasing teacher candidates’ willingness and readiness to incorporate Aboriginal knowledges and pedagogies into their classroom practice?&quot; Data consisted of surveys administered to approximately 70 teacher candidates at three key points in their program as well as two rounds of interviews with five purposively selected participants. We found that teacher candidates most appreciated the inclusion of First Voice perspectives, in-depth instruction on current and historical events, and a continuous examination of privilege as means to prepare them for incorporating Aboriginal content into their future practice. While most students reported feeling m...

Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 2015

Considering that the national education discourse in Australia is monopolised by discussion on teaching and teacher quality, we problematize this discourse based upon what members of the local Aboriginal community assert as characteristics of effective teachers and their practice. Further phases of this research initiative, which investigate the effect of adjusted practice based upon community members' assertions, are also presented.

In Bengt-Ove Andreassen, and James R. Lewis, eds, Textbook Gods, Berlin (Equinox 2014), pp. 117-133.

Among practitioners of the academic study of religion at university level it has long been acknowledged that the theoretical models of religion that have dominated the field since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century were uncritically derived from Christianity and frequently produced caricatures of religions other than Christianity. This has led some scholars to call for the deconstruction of “Religious Studies” as a discipline and the abandonment of the category “religion” (Dubuisson 2003). The case of Indigenous Australian religion is particularly poignant, in that from the arrival of Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, signalling the beginning of colonial occupation, in 1788 to the publication of Edward Burnett Tylor’s Primitive Culture in 1971, the European rulers of Australia refused to acknowledge the existence of the religions of Aboriginal Australians, according to them only ‘traditions’ and ‘customs’ (Swain and Trompf 1995). Since the 1960s when Aboriginal Australians were granted citizenship White Australians have developed an interest in Indigenous religions. This was part of the broader ‘New Age’ fascination with First Nations, and resulted in similarly faulty representations of Indigenous Australian religions, which were deeply imbricated with clichéd images of Native Americans, African tribes, and New Zealand’s Maori. This chapter examines the presentation of Indigenous Australian religions in current textbooks used in Australian secondary and tertiary education, including Mudge et al, Living Religion (1997), Hartney, Cambridge Studies of Religion (2008), and King et al, Oxford Studies of Religion Preliminary and HSC Course (2009).